Art Therapy?

IMG_1855I’ve written before about how the Monster seems to have an interesting relationship with art.

Now, I’ve yet to meet a child who doesn’t like to scribble, paint or the like.  Just because my kids have picked up my distinct lack of talent for the medium doesn’t mean that they’re not going to do it.

But by and large, let’s be honest.  Most of us don’t think of art (as done in schools) as necessarily something that’s good for academics on their own.  I remember plenty of meaningless projects in art classes all the way through middle school, in which I did everything from painting to collage to silk screening, and it was in the name of broadening my experiences as a child so that I’d have an interesting and diverse background in art (and might appreciate it at some point).  It’s obviously a little different at the Monster’s school, since most things are with an eye towards driving communication and helping children express themselves in one way or another…

Tiger, by the MonsterSo, about two weeks ago, these little drawings started coming home in the Monster’s backpack.  Each one’s been a pencil drawing of something – a butterfly, a flower, a tiger, cake – that’s clearly drawn by him, and with a caption written by him.  But we’ve no idea what prompted him to draw it.  I can imagine that his SLP told him what to draw, and how to label it, but… you can also tell clearly that a child drew them, free-hand, rather than having someone hand-over-hand lead them into drawing it.  They’re all just recognizable enough that you know what it is with a little bit of prompting even without the label.  Which leads me to some interesting lines of thought.

Now… I know that the Monster knows what these things are.  He’s always been good with the catalog of nouns at his disposal, and he’s been very quick to pick up new words, store them when they’re concrete concepts, and drag them out when appropriate.  If we’re going to the zoo, we can have a bit of a back and forth with prompting about what he might see while he’s there, for example, though there’s no guarantee that you’re not just going to get a litany of nouns pertaining to the animals.  He hasn’t previously shown an interest to us of trying to actually produce a likeness, though…

I think that my wife and I are going to have to ask the SLP about this when we have our next IEP meeting in two weeks.

3 thoughts on “Art Therapy?

    • We’ve tried it. He’s not really seemed to get anything out of it to date, and so we’ve concentrated on other things (which is funny, given how he normally takes to music). His teachers at Gateway are employing some aspects of it into other things they’re doing around the school, so we’ll see what comes of it. 🙂

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